Question

I have a LINQ query from an XML file. I am filtering out certain nodes that have empty children, but also wanted to filter nodes which contain illegal characters.

From the example below, you can see that I am attempting to filter nodes that also have a greater-than character < in them. (See child3 in XML sample)

However, this does not work. I can test for other characters inside the node like * but < does not work.

How can I modify my LINQ query to check for a greater-than character < inside a node.

<Root>
   <Header>
        <total>123456</total>
    </Header>
    <Transactions>
      <Txn>
         <child1>BSmith</value1>
         <child2>Bob Smith</child2>
         <child3>Acme Company<</child3>
         <child4>Suite 3B</child4>
         <child5>1234 Main Street</child5>
      </Txn>
      ...
    </Transactions>
</Root>

var root = XElement.Parse(xmlText);                
var elementsThatCanBeEmpty = new HashSet<XName>
{
    XName.Get("child4")
};

var transactionList = from transactions in 
                      root.Elements(XName.Get("Transactions"))
                      .Elements().AsEnumerable()
                      where transactions.Elements().Any
                      (
                        el =>
                        (String.IsNullOrEmpty(el.Value) || el.Value.Contains("*")) &&
                        !elementsThatCanBeEmpty.Contains(el.Name)
                      )
                      select new 
                      { 
                         UserName = transactions.Element(XName.Get("child1")).Value
                      };

Answer 1

have a look at this. it is a very good starting point for you and you can use WHERE keyword to filter your XML data

http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/introduction-to-linq-simple-xml-parsing